Theatre of the Oppressed Dramaturgy/ August 2015 Rhodes University, Grahamstown- South Africa.

Facilitated a three day Theatre of the Oppressed and Seminar talk with Honours and Masters theatre students at Rhodes University.

as part of the Rhodes University Residency I also accompained faciliators to the Grahamstown minimum security prison program as well as primary school workshops in the township.

Journey with an Artist Program- Johannesburg, South Africa, August 2015

Facilitated a four day intensive theatre workshop with refugee and asylum seeker children (7- 13years of age) as a means to discuss freedom and rights- as part of the annual Three2Six Refugee Education Project at Sacred Heart College (a program that provides an education bridging program for refugee children who have been denied access to local South African public schools). The program provides education support, a meal a day and teachers who are themselves from the refugee and asylum seeker community.

Form for Encounter and Exchange: An Artist Field School Residency/ Centre for Cultural Partnerships/ University of Melbourne - May 17-27, 2015

Stori Blo Iumi was a 3-week Forum Theatre project in collaboration with Art Haus, which took place in Honiara, Solomon Islands in January 2015. The project invited Solomon Islander women of all ages to participate in a series of six 5-hour workshops, during which they creatively explored and critically reflected on their lived experiences through storytelling, Image Theatre and Forum Theatre techniques. The project culminated in an interactive Forum Theatre performance exploring corruption in the Solomon Islands politics. The content of the performance was participant-driven.

Stori Blo Iumi means Our Story in Pijin. What makes the title interesting is that the grammar of Pijin allows for two ways of l expressing the concept of ‘we’: the ‘exclusive we’ (us, but not you, Pij.mifala) and the ‘inclusive we’ (all of us, Pij. iumi). Therefore the linguistic structures of Pijin capture the essence of what Forum Theatre is about much better than the English ones.

The stories presented on stage do not just belong to the actors, they are everyone’s stories and everyone can try out an alternative ending.

This year, I was granted my first arts residency in Northern Ireland with an internationally renowned community theatre practitioner Hector Aristizábal (Founder and Artistic Director of ImaginAction) in collaboration with Playhouse from Derry. The residency investigated the use of theatre for social change and healing in Northern Ireland

For three weeks the internationally selected team of six from Holland, Belgium, USA and Australia were involved in masterclasses, collective learning and directly within local communities including:

Maghaberry Prison, a high security prison housing adult male long-term sentenced and remand prisoners. The workshops were part of the Family Matters program, which provided alternative means for inmates with children to stay connected with their families.